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Robert Aickman


Cold Hand in Mine

Robert Aickman

Aickman's 'strange stories' (his preferred term) are constructed immaculately, the neuroses of his characters painted in subtle shades. He builds dread by the steady accrual of realistic detail, until the reader realises that the protagonist is heading towards their doom as if in a dream.

Cold Hand in Mine, first published in 1975, stands as one of Aickman's finest collections and contains eight tales including 'Pages from a Young Girl's Journal' which won the World Fantasy Award.

Table of Contents:

  • The Swords - (1969)
  • The Real Road to the Church - (1975)
  • Niemandswasser - (1975)
  • Pages from a Young Girl's Journal - (1973)
  • The Hospice - (1975)
  • The Same Dog - (1974)
  • Meeting Mr. Millar - (1972)
  • The Clock Watcher - (1973)

Compulsory Games

Robert Aickman

Cross Henry James with M.R. James and you might end up with a writer like Robert Aickman, though his self-described "strange stories" remain confoundingly and uniquely his own. Aickman's superbly written tales terrify not with standard thrills and gore but through a radical overturning of the laws of nature and everyday life. His territory of the strange, of the "void behind the face of order," is a surreal region that grotesquely mimics the quotidian: Is that river the Thames, or is it even a river? What does it mean when a prospective lover removes one dress, and then another--and then another? Do a herd of cows in a peaceful churchyard contain the souls of jilted women preparing to trample a cruel lover to death? Published for the first time under one cover, this collection offers a generous introduction to a sophisticated, psychologically acute modernist whose achievements have too long been hidden under the cloak of genre.

Table of Contents:

  • Introduction: Under the Skin - essay by Victoria Nelson
  • Compulsory Games - (1976)
  • Hand in Glove - (1979)
  • Marriage - (1977)
  • Le Miroir - (1977)
  • No Time Is Passing - (1980)
  • Raising the Wind - (1977)
  • Residents Only - (1977)
  • Wood - (1976)
  • The Strangers - (2015)
  • The Coffin House - (2015)
  • Letters to the Postman - (1980)
  • Laura - (1977)
  • The Fully-Conducted Tour - (2005)
  • A Disciple of Plato - (2015)
  • Just a Song at Twilight - (1965)

Dark Entries

Robert Aickman

Robert Aickman (1914-1981) was the grandson of Richard Marsh, a leading Victorian novelist of the occult. Though his chief occupation in life was first as a conservationist of England's canals he eventually turned his talents to writing what he called 'strange stories.' Dark Entries (1964) was his first full collection, the debut in a body of work that would inspire Peter Straub to hail Aickman as 'this century's most profound writer of what we call horror stories.'

Content:

  • The School Friend - (1964)
  • Bind Your Hair - (1964)
  • The Waiting Room - (1956)
  • Ringing the Changes - (1955)
  • Choice of Weapons - (1964)
  • The View - (1951)

Pages from a Young Girl's Journal

Robert Aickman

WFA winning novelette. It originally appeared in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, February 1973. The story can also be found in the anthologies The Year's Best Horror Stories No. 3 (1973) edited by Richard Davis, First World Fantasy Awards (1977), edited by Gahan Wilson, Vampires (1987), edited by Alan Ryan, and A Taste for Blood (1992), edited by Martin H. Greenberg. It is included in the collection Cold Hand in Mine (1975).

Painted Devils: Strange Stories

Robert Aickman

This collection delves into nightmare and madness, death and the supernatural.

Table of Contents:

  • Ravissante - (1968)
  • The Houses of the Russians - (1968)
  • The View - (1951)
  • Ringing the Changes - (1955)
  • The School Friend - (1964)
  • The Waiting Room - (1956)
  • Marriage - (1977)
  • Larger Than Oneself - (1966)
  • My Poor Friend - (1966)

Residents Only

Robert Aickman

Residents Only is a novella by Robert Aickman. It originally appeared in the collection Tales of Love and Death (1977).

Sub Rosa

Robert Aickman

Table of Contents:

  • Ravissante - novelette
  • The Inner Room - (1966) - novelette
  • Never Visit Venice - novelette
  • The Unsettled Dust - novelette
  • The Houses of the Russians - novelette
  • No Stronger Than a Flower - (1966) - shortstory
  • The Cicerones - (1967) - shortstory
  • Into the Wood - novelette

The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories

Robert Aickman

An omnibus collection featuring some of the finest works of a master of weird fiction...

One of the preeminent writers of weird fiction, Robert Aickman is celebrated for his unsettling and often ambiguous "strange stories," but he once wrote that "those, if any, who wish to know more about me, should plunge beneath the frivolous surface of The Late Breakfasters," his only novel, originally published in 1964.

In The Late Breakfasters, young Griselda de Reptonville is invited by Mrs. Hatch to a house party at her country estate, Beams (which, incidentally, is haunted). There, amidst an array of eccentric characters and bizarre happenings, she will meet the love of her life, Louise. But when their short-lived relationship is cruelly cut short, Griselda must embark on a quest to recapture the happiness she has lost.

Never before published in the United States and long unobtainable, Aickman's odd and whimsical novel is joined in this omnibus volume by six of his finest weird tales (three of them making their first-ever American appearance): "My Poor Friend", "The Visiting Star", "Larger Than Oneself", "A Roman Question", "Mark Ingestre: The Customer's Tale", and "Rosamund's Bower", as well as a new introduction by Philip Challinor.

The Strangers

Robert Aickman

The Strangers is a novella by Robert Aickman. It originally appeared in the collection The Strangers and Other Writings (2015).

The Unsettled Dust

Robert Aickman

Robert Aickman, the supreme master of the supernatural, brings together eight stories where strange things happen that the reader is unable to predict. His characters are often lonely and middle-aged but all have the same thing in common - they are all brought to the brink of an abyss that shows how terrifyingly fragile our piece of mind actually is. 'The Next Glade', 'Bind Your Hair' and 'The Stains' appeared together in The Wine-Dark Sea in 1988 while 'The Unsettled Dust', 'The House of the Russians', 'No Stronger Than a Flower', 'The Cicerones' and 'Ravissante' first appeared in Sub Rosa in 1968. The stories were published together as The Unsettled Dust in 1990. Aickman received the British Fantasy Award in 1981 for 'The Stains', which had first appeared in the anthology New Terrors (1980), before appearing in the last original posthumous collection of Aickman's short stories, Night Voices (1985).

Table of Contents:

  • The Unsettled Dust - (1968)
  • The Houses of the Russians - (1968)
  • No Stronger Than a Flower - (1966)
  • The Cicerones - (1967)
  • The Next Glade - (1980)
  • Ravissante - (1968)
  • Bind Your Hair - (1964)
  • The Stains - (1980)

The Wine-Dark Sea

Robert Aickman

Aickman's 'strange stories' (his preferred term) are constructed immaculately, the neuroses of his characters painted in subtle shades. He builds dread by the steady accrual of realistic detail, until the reader realises that the protagonist is heading towards their doom as if in a dream.

First published in 1988, The Wine-Dark Sea contains eight stories that build towards disturbing yet enigmatic endings, including the classic story 'Your Tiny Hand is Frozen.'

Table of Contents:

  • Introduction - essay by Peter Straub
  • The Wine-Dark Sea - (1966)
  • The Trains - (1951)
  • Your Tiny Hand is Frozen - (1953)
  • Growing Boys - (1977)
  • The Fetch - (1980)
  • The Inner Room - (1966)
  • Never Visit Venice - (1968)
  • The Next Glade - (1980)
  • Into the Wood - (1968)
  • Bind Your Hair - (1964)
  • The Stains - (1980)

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